There is so much to write about these days that one has difficulty in determining what the most important topics are. Two such items which interest me seem to have taken on a life of their own as they merrily continue on unabated with absolutely no sane reasoning behind them.
REPLACING OBAMACARE
The first of these is the Republican’s valiant attempt at replacing or even fixing Obamacare. True, Obamacare does suck, big time – and there is no way for it to ever work out the way it was intended to.
I have had a number of careers in my lifetime, one of which was as an Actuary, specifically, the Chief Actuary of a life insurance company. This company, as did many other life insurance companies, sold life insurance, annuities and health insurance. While the first two products, life insurance and annuities, were almost always profitable, the third product, health insurance, was rarely if ever profitable. Why did they sell health insurance? Because it was expected of them.
And when the health insurance, whatever the variety, be it individual, group, long term, short term or major medical, was not doing too well, meaning that claims represented too high a percentage of premium income, the insurance company would apply to the State Insurance Department of the state or states in which the health insurance was sold – and ask for permission to increase the health insurance premiums. This request had to be accompanied by all of the statistics that made up the existing as well as the projected claims ratios before the State Insurance Department would grant, but not always, the permission to raise the premiums.
So what do these insurance companies do now that are under Obamacare and have atrocious claims ratios? They either unilaterally bump up the premiums or they simply opt out of the system. Bumping up the premiums only makes the problem worse because the healthy people will leave and only the sick or uninsurable will remain, causing an even greater increase in the claims ratio. If the insurance company elects to opt out, the insured gets the proverbial shaft. So what can be done to reverse this situation? The answer is nothing.
So how do we go about providing the badly needed health insurance to some 25 to 35 million people that are lacking? By stop worrying about the insurance companies and taking them out of the equation and then replacing Obamacare with a single payor system, ala Medicare. That’s how. And since we already have Medicare in place, we don’t have to re-invent the wheel. Just expand Medicare to include everyone and make it mandatory like Social Security.
But isn’t this socialized medicine? No more than Medicare which has been around since the mid 60’s. But doesn’t Medicare restrict the level of benefits available? Yes, but all one has to do is to apply for one of the many Supplemental Medicare Plans that are already on the market. But doesn’t this do away with the healthy competition between the various insurance companies that are planning to sell health insurance under Obamacare? Yeah, right. The insurance companies are in this for only one reason – to make a killing at ours or the governments expense. And don’t you forget it.
How would we pay for the expansion of Medicare? The same way we were going to pay for it under Obamacare but via a single payor system that leaves out the insurance companies and their bogus competition. We would make it mandatory as in the case of Social Security. We could shut down the VA with all of its inherent waste and have all of our veterans, service men and service women covered by Medicare. We could actively pursue existing Medicare fraud which costs us up to 75 billion or more per year. That’s how, for starters.
THE RUSSIA CONNECTION
As I understand it, the purpose of the media is to report all aspects of the news, not just one version and certainly not to render their own verdict, whether by insinuation or otherwise.
Perhaps, one day, if we live long enough there will be an investigation of all of the investigations. Under the syndrome of, “My investigation is bigger than your investigation.”, the lingering innuendos that only serve to breed more innuendos are becoming nausea ad infinitum. What’s more, the situation reminds me of the telephone game, wherein the first person makes a confidential statement and it makes no difference whether it is true or not, to a second person, who in turn passes it on to a third person, and so on and so on, the end result being something entirely different than what the first person actually said. Enough I say.
If there is anyone who has any real evidence, excluding opinions, what ever it is, that Trump or any of his team took part in any illegal activities with the Russians or anyone else for that matter, they should bring it to the attention of the authorities as well as the media and let the chips fall where they may. And after that exercise, the same should be done on behalf of all of the Democrats.